Transitioning from news avoidance

I used to take a daily dose of news from CBC Radio–a small, thoughtful and sanely-chosen selection of what was going on in B.C., Canada, and the big wide world, handily delivered as I was making dinner. After 9/11, I stopped listening to those broadcasts, and for the decade that followed my exposure to current events was spotty. Mostly, I’d pass headlines on the street and thus know the bare minimum about what The Vancouver Sun thought was worthy of the top fold. On the rare occasions when something was happening and I wanted to know more, I’d surf up the details on the Internet. They were always there waiting.

I stopped with even the CBC broadcasts because the world was in a terrible space, at that time, and the news kept dragging me back into the mire of distress. Regular exposure to brutality, pollution, war and especially the rage-inducing stupidity of politicians was eating at my peace of mind.

I find myself having to explain and justify this, often.

“I’m a news avoider,” I learned, isn’t a statement many people hear–and it’s one they’re fundamentally inclined to disbelieve. It’s a bit like explaining to a little kid that it’s possible to live without a car. (Or without a TV, I’m told, though I haven’t been in that position.) So for the past decade, I’ve ended up telling someone, “No, really, I don’t watch the news or read the papers,” on the order of twice a month, minimum. In most cases, I have this conversation three times with any given individual before they actually take it on.

There was always a little nagging sense, in the back of my mind, that I was skating on an obligation of citizenship by ignoring the world as much as I possibly could. But, I’d remind myself, I don’t actually believe the newspapers or the TV folks do a terrific job of keeping one up-to-date anyway. Most of what they offer on a daily basis is partial narratives about ongoing stories. The idea seems to be to offer just enough new stuff to make you want to read more tomorrow… and the lack of depth drives me crazy.

(And that doesn’t even get into the question of accuracy–I know many of you question whether mainstream media can be trusted to deliver reliable facts. Or the opinion, held by some, that the point of the news is to not make us informed so much as to make us afraid.)

Anyway. I prefer the kind of coverage that comes from feature articles and long-form documentaries. So instead of breaking news, I read things like The Best American Science and Nature Writing (this year’s guest editor is Mary Roach, folks! I know–OMG, right? Pre-order now!) Snuffy sends me copies of Texas Monthly so I can read Pam Coloff’s excellent articles about justice, and miscarriages thereof.

Social media has pulled me back into the news world, a bit. It started with Livejournal: occasionally my friends would post a link tantalizing enough to follow. And now the headlines stream by, along with the treasure and flotsam in my Twitter feed, and I cherry pick the stuff that interests me and run a minimal risk of hearing that our prime minister’s said something that makes my head explode. I follow CBC News and Peter Mansbridge and Mashable. But I’m still a feature reader at heart, and so mostly I have gotten entirely sucked into browsing–no surprise–the articles available at Longreads. That’s where the meaty stuff seems to be, and I heartily recommend it to you all.

Ambling, lunching, couchsurfing, all the weekend sports

We had two days of warm and muggy weather and on Saturday K and I made the most of it, ambling through the Farmer’s Market at Trout Lake (first time all season I’ve made it there!) and from there south beyond Kingsway, just for the walk. It was an uphill climb–my walking app claims we ascended about a hundred feet–but finally the hot and the damp were overpowering, and so we caught a bus on Kingsway to Mink.

My new flowery Doc Martins and my feet seem pretty happy with each other. After a careful breaking in period, I’ve done several 5K-10K walking days in a row, and the shoes have even made it through a number of rainstorms without carrying me home soaked. So they have won the coveted honor of being my winter boots. How fabulous for them and me, mmm?

Boots!

After many failed attempts to find them open, we also finally got to Crumpler–I wanted to look at their bags, but the Answer was not there. I am beginning to suspect that the Answer is for me to have my own personal valet/Sherpa. Then we went on a sandwich-hunt that turned into a spontaneous visit with Barb. Finally, surprise! We wound up at Cafe Calabria.

Now the rain has come back and I’m wondering if it’s chicken-baking weather.

The new TV season continues to occupy my remaining free time and free brain space: The Mentalist started surprisingly well, but seems to have found a way to cruise back in the direction of their formula, so I’m not sure if I’ll keep on watching. Prime Suspect, meanwhile, is doing Realism, big time. Which isn’t always my favorite thing, but the first episode’s script was very tight and Maria Bello turned in a fascinating performance. The story was all about Jane Timoney and departmental politics and not so much about the murder of the week. It didn’t seem entirely divorced from the original and oh so amazing Prime Suspect, and the feminist heart of that series–the stuff about a woman trying to make it in a male-dominated profession–was very in-your face. For some reason, I thought that material would be downplayed or excised entirely.

I’m still enjoying 30 Rock, too, though the high school reunion episode was too mean for my liking.

What’s bad out there in TV-land? I will not be watching Blue Bloods this year. Last year’s finale was Far Too Cheesy, cheesier even than a quattro formaggio sauce with extra cheese on top, served on cheese-stuffed tortellini. It may in fact have been the most howlingly tasteless thing to cross my flickerbox since Kiefer Sutherland solved 24 hours worth of his personal and professional problems by taking an axe to… well, I won’t spoil you just in case. Either you’re blissfully unaware or you’re cursing me for reminding you.

Blurgh, Tube

I rarely admit it publicly when I’m under the weather, as the primary symptom of every little bug I pick up can be characterized as “really doesn’t appreciate unsolicited medical advice.” This time is no exception, but I will say I am having my annual September go-round with germs, and it’s eaten into what I hoped would be a pocket of time and energy I’d set aside for blogging and working out. Next week, maybe, that’ll come together.

In the meantime, it’s cool enough to have the fire on, which is comforting and delightful and something of a relief.

I will say a few short things about TV, though: the best things about the first new episode of Inspector Lewis were its title (“Old, Unhappy, Far Off Things”) and Laurence Fox’s hair. The plot had about as much cause and effect as a bowl of overcooked spaghetti; if there was a Huh? award, it would rate one. Made me sad, it did. I love me my Lewis.

Doctor Who: loved “Let’s Kill Hitler,” especially all the Rory content, but felt meh about “The Girl who Waited,” which seemed to me to be an attempt to water down five minutes of potentially powerful emotion into twenty-five minutes of really coulda done something else there.

Progress through Torchwood has stalled midway, also due to plotfail.

Finally, I saw the Ringer pilot. This, I thought, had some promise: there’s enough of a plot there, at least, to get me interested, Sarah Michelle Gellar was well-cast, Ioan Gruffudd was a welcome surprise, and there were enough teeny ambiguous story elements in play to make it seem as though the possibilities are–if not endless–multidirectional. I’ve seen it characterized as noirish, and I’m not entirely sure I agree. Then again, I’m no noir expert, and I’m willing to wait and see.

Next week brings us Castle (and many other crime shows, returning and new) and the return of Glee.

Facial recognition=teh fail

My father is back in Canada for the summer from his teaching gig in China, and he and his wife passed through Vancouver on Friday. I took them to Cafe Calabria, naturally, and obliged Frank Junior to shoot us.

photo.JPG

Bear hadn’t been to my current apartment and had to phone a few times to locate me. When he got close–as in a five minute drive away–I told him I’d wait on my corner and flag him down. And so I ended up out there, away from the phone, with no idea what he drives. I haven’t seen Bear in a couple years, and my memory for visual stuff, including faces, is not my strongest suit.

Anyway, it turns out every man of a certain age looks like my father when I’m peering into the cars rushing by on First, trying to guess whether or not the driver looks like he knows where he’s going.

Finally this aging, creaky rusted-out white VW bug pulls up on the cross street. Aha! Decrepit Volkswagons were, at least at one time, my father’s car of choice. And within is a guy with a snow-white flowing beard and the style of hat Bear favors (he calls ’em pimp hats. Think Huggy Bear on *Starsky & Hutch,* if you’re old enough. If you’re not old enough, you’ve missed nothing).

I looked at this man and I thought: Wow, my father has really aged.

The light changed, the car whined, whined, I tell you! as it tried to get across First. It sounded like it was trying to run a rocket engine on something like orange juice instead of gas. I waved like mad at the parking space in front of my building.

Moving at a land speed that would do a leopard slug proud, assuming said slug was newly recovered from a debilitating foot injury, the car pulled over beside the parking space and the window creaked down. Holy cow, I thought. So white-haired! So rickety! So indecisive and confused-looking! Did he look like that before he went to China? Wouldn’t I have noticed? And hey, Bear, would you just park already?

Creak, creak, creak as he rolled down his window.

“Excuse me young lady. Are you waving at me?”

Oh. Not even remotely my father.

I apologized, told him I thought he was someone else, and didn’t tell him it was someone I ought to damnwell recognize on sight. He got his laboring little bug up to walking speed again–I should’ve given him a push–and tootled away. I passed him yesterday and he’d made it all the way to the corner of Venables and McLean, ten blocks north of here.

Bear and Lily showed up five minutes later, driving a car with a real engine and looking like they do in the above shot, except that I deprived Bear of his Edmonton Oilers cap before the shoot. Maybe the pimp hats weren’t so bad.

In Techno Transition

Clarion West Write-a-thon report: I have finished the 20,000 words I committed two six-ish weeks ago! Bow down in awe, or, better yet, sponsor me!!

I have finished my first complete start-to-finish story written on the iPad, 8,500 words of urban fantasy, drafted on paper and entered into a simple text app called Simplenote and then, when it was far enough along to need formatting, in Doc2 HD. The latter let me back it up to Dropbox, so it wasn’t just resident in the pad’s memory (and therefore vulnerable) for very long… it hits the cloud and my laptop very briskly.

How well will this work when I’m revising an 85K word novel? We’ll have to see. In fact, we’ll see starting this very morning! I had thought I couldn’t search the text in a long document, which was just about a dealbreaker. I need to be able to hop back and forth to specific points in the story… however, I’ve just figured out that Doc2 does do this.

Other things about the tech side of this…

–iPad, keyboard and cases being three pounds lighter than the laptop, my upper body is much happier about hauling it around.

–The tablet has spoiled me, somewhat, for typing on the iPod with my thumbs. So my hands are happier too, especially as I have been trying to give them a break by texting less. (Sorry, Tweeps.) However, there’s a two hour window on Thursdays when I used to get a ton of blogging, teaching, and article-writing done on the pod, and now I’m pretty disinclined. I will need to find another way, as those two hours on the bus are a necessary work window, and the ride goes faster when I’m busy. (Probably this will end up being me writing longhand and dictating the text into Dragon later.)

–The fact that the pod fits in one hand still makes it nicer for a certain amount of casual web surfing and reading. I have smallish hands, and the pod is a good size and weight for them.

–I have two stands for the iPad. One is the origami keyboard case that essentially transforms the thing into a teeny tiny laptop. The other is a six-legged Gumby type spider thing, which Rumble considers his mortal enemy. We mostly use Gumby for watching Netflix in bed. So we’ll get set up and start watching an episode of, say, Leverage, and a few seconds later the screen will start sliding away from us, as Rumble attempts to drag Gumby off to his lair for punishment.

Rumble's new Nemesis

–I am still waiting for someone to recommend the two dollar app that will make me rich, famous, taller, interested in fashion, obscenely athletic, capable of flying a helicopter and spiritually enlightened. Bueller? Neo? Anyone?